One 'do at a time

There's a lot going on in Alias. A lot of double-crossing. By double agents. It's not clear who's good and who's bad. Or if the good people know they're working for bad people. Or if the bad people know there are good people working for them. It's just too complicated to consider becoming involved midway through the second season.

That's what I thought, anyway. I'd tried before. I'd spent a couple of lonely Monday nights grappling with the amazing double - triple - life of CIA agent/SD-6 agent/grad student Sydney Bristow (Jennifer Garner), but I couldn't even figure out who was on whose side, or on both sides, or why.

Sydney was a very talented spy, I knew that. I could tell from the way the other characters looked awe-struck as they watched her feats via an earring-cam or some other suitably stylish device. But that's about as far as I got. So I enlisted a friend, an Alias fan from the beginning, to help me crack it.

There's no getting around the fact that the Alias premise is complicated. Sydney works for the CIA. She also worked undercover in SD-6, an evil organisation bent on world domination. SD-6 had no idea that Sydney was a double agent, just as it didn't know that another of its team, Sydney's father Jack (Victor Garber), was also working for the goodies.

Currently, though, the collapse of SD-6 has Sydney one-out with its former boss, Arvin Sloane (Ron Rifkin), who, unbeknown to Sydney, orchestrated SD-6's downfall through Sydney's hands to further his own evil agenda. Confused yet? Add to Sydney's mix a burgeoning romance with her CIA minder Michael Vaughn (Michael Vartan), a roommate and best friend (Merrin Dungey) who has been killed and replaced by a genetic clone, and a double-agent mother (Lena Olin) in federal custody for selling out the US to the Russians during the Cold War, and you have almost more drama than one girl can handle.

But Alias is less convoluted than it appears. Mostly it relies more on the familiar episodic structure of series television than it does on complex, long-term storylines. Each episode follows a fairly standard story arc: Sydney confronts a problem, an incredibly daring and dangerous mission is planned to solve it, and Sydney does her job. Her missions are rarely more than short, sharp music-video/action sequences with a beginning, middle and end.

For example, SD-6 is composed of 12 cells, which call themselves "The Alliance". The Alliance's central computer server is kept on an aeroplane that is constantly airborne and presided over by a fat, lecherous old Frenchman. Sydney's job is to get on board and crack the code for the Alliance's computer network. So she goes undercover as a call girl, and we see her strutting seductively towards the Frenchman wearing nothing but lingerie and thwacking a riding crop.

Did I not mention that another element of Alias is the constant quest to get Sydney in as many outrageous or revealing "undercover" outfits as possible? So after she appears in the black garter belt, in slow motion and with pumping AC/DC underneath, the Frenchman decides he prefers red, so we get the same sequence again with Sydney in a different, but equally revealing red ensemble.

Each episode seems to feature a similar moment; we get Sydney climbing out of a pool, dripping wet in a blue bikini. Or we see her dressed as a member of the Russian military; or in a blonde wig; or in the now-famous figure-hugging electric-blue PVC dress. Strangely, a baseball cap is usually sufficient disguise for her partners.

But that's all part of the fun, another example of a show playing with its audience in a style that has become a hallmark of contemporary series television. The witches of Charmed have differently themed outfits each week, characters have swapped bodies in Buffy, and even Friends gets the occasional laugh out of Monica in a fat suit. They may have little to do with the narrative, but we tolerate the slow-motion Sydney sequences and the countless costume changes because they are part of the Alias experience.

So don't be afraid of Alias. The episodes usually stand alone as a tight, taut hour of action and drama. If you need background you can visit abc.go.com/primetime/alias or, better still, find yourself an Alias fan.